Senate Votes Tight Curbs on Covert Actions : Bill Requires Notifying Congress Within 48 Hours

The Senate, in the first legislative response to the Iran-Contra scandal, Tuesday passed a bill intended to close legal loopholes that allowed the White House to ship arms to Iran without notifying Congress.

The bill, approved 71 to 19, would require the President to tell Congress--or at least the four most senior members of the congressional leadership--within 48 hours of any covert operation or other “special activities” aimed at secretly influencing foreign governments. A similar measure is under consideration in the House and is expected to come to a vote this spring.

Veto Warning Issued

Reagan Administration officials, arguing that the 48-hour notification requirement infringes on the constitutional powers of the President, have warned Congress that a veto is possible. The bill’s margin of passage, however, would be sufficient to override a veto.

Last July, Congress and the Administration struck an agreement to tighten guidelines for the conduct of covert operations that includes most of the major provisions of the current bill. But members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which wrote the bill, decided that the agreement is no substitute for law.

“We have no alternative but to legislate” because some Administration officials have refused to commit themselves to notifying Congress of all covert actions in the future, Sen. David L. Boren (D-Okla.), the Intelligence Committee chairman, said.

The debate on the bill showed the depth of the anger that many lawmakers continue to feel over the way Congress was kept in the dark on the Iran arms sales.

“I think we all should take great resentment” over the Administration’s refusal to inform even the congressional leadership of the operation, said Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), the bill’s principal sponsor.

Administration officials entrusted details of the deal to an Iranian middleman of suspect character, Manucher Ghorbanifar, but “somehow four members of Congress cannot be trusted,” Cohen complained.

Scuttling of Plan Seen

Had leading members of Congress been notified, they would have been able to persuade the Administration to scuttle the ill-fated plan, Cohen and other supporters of the bill argued.

Conservative opponents of the bill contend that imposing a 48-hour limit would complicate presidential decision-making on foreign policy issues. The proposal eventually “would substitute our judgment for that of the President,” Sen. Malcolm Wallop (R-Wyo.) said.

Current law already says that Congress--or at least the four senior leaders--must be told of covert actions. But the law says only that the notification must be “timely” and does not define that word.

In the Iran arms case, the Administration postponed notifying Congress for nearly a year and then briefed congressional leaders only after reports of the arms sales were published. Administration officials have testified that their intention was not to notify Congress at all until all U.S. hostages seized in Lebanon had been freed in exchange for the arms delivered.

The new bill would forbid such delays and would require the executive branch to observe tighter procedures before beginning covert actions.

In most cases, the Administration would be required to inform eight senior congressional leaders in advance of “special activities,” which would cover clandestine U.S. efforts to influence foreign governments through propaganda, paramilitary missions or other means.

Information about especially sensitive covert operations could be withheld for up to 48 hours after they had been approved, and notification would be limited to only the four top leaders--the Senate majority and minority leaders, the Speaker of the House and the House minority leader.

Presidential ‘Findings’

The bill would also strengthen the current requirement that the President first sign documents, formally called “findings,” before authorizing any secret missions. The Iran arms sales were carried out at first with only Reagan’s oral approval--what White House officials have called an “oral finding,” and then, later on, with a finding written to be retroactive.

Supporters of the bill argue that such devices undermine the purpose of a finding, which is to have a contemporaneous document establishing what a covert mission is supposed to accomplish and how it is to be carried out.